MIF: It Felt Like A Kiss - a spectacular festival coup
A DARING and unique production, It Felt Like A Kiss is a Manchester International Festival collaboration between renowned film-maker Adam Curtis and director Felix Barrett of groundbreaking theatre company Punchdrunk, with original music composed by Blur’s Damon Albarn.
“We’re all working outside our comfort zone,” laughs Curtis, in a quiet moment between whizzing around different bits of the thoroughly-intriguing looking show which might well prove to be one of the Festival’s big hits, if the glimpse I got of it is any indication.
The show tells a story of America’s rise to power in the golden age of pop (hint: the title comes from a Phil Spector-produced song by The Crystals), beginning in 1959 and spotlighting the dreams and desires that America inspired during the Sixties when the world began to embrace the country and its culture as never before.
“I’m not going to give you too many clues about what actually happens during the show,” Adam says. “But our idea was to create a world inside an anonymous office building.
No real idea
“We like the fact that people will come here with no real idea what they’re going to get.
“They’re given a brief instruction about what they can do, including being able to pick up and examine anything they come across, such as books or documents, and what they will find in there.
“Then they go in and experience the world, finding a set of clues as they go that, when they eventually find themselves watching a film, are given one possible explanation.
“They can then interpret those clues and signs as they like.
Develops into menace
“What I like describing it as is a world full of enchantment – but that develops into menace.
“Ultimately, its about you. It’s about that world and it’s about that era but it’s trying to show to you that the way you feel about yourself and the way you feel about the world today is a political product of the ideas of that time.”
The whole project grew out of a film Adam made, exploring his own ideas about that time, its ambiguity and how it impacts today.
That film (also called It Felt Like A Kiss) was seen by Felix Barrett ‘who told me’, Adam remembers, ‘that he thought he could see a way to make that into a theatrical piece’.
Three-dimensional film
“Then we met Alex Poots, who liked the idea and showed the film to Damon Albarn, who said ‘I could write some music for that’ – not for the film, which already has music of its own in it, but for the whole experience,” says Adam.
“Damon saw the idea that what we were really up to was a three-dimensional film. Which is one way of looking at it!
“For the last six weeks we’ve been building this strange place and the reason we wanted to do it here was because Alex Poots is very astute.
“Unlike practically all other festivals, which pander to the received opinions of their asssumed demographic, he wants to push things.
Pushes its audience
“So this is specific to this festival and I suppose it embodies the spirit of the festival because it’s adventurous and it pushes its audience.
“The ideal reaction you’d like to get from someone coming out of this show is that it was a bit like experiencing life.
“That’s really what we’re trying to get at, that when you experience things they’re just fragmentary and it’s only later that you turn them into stories. Who turns them into stories and what those stories are is a function of political power and your own individual will.”
It Felt Like A Kiss is at Quay House, Quay Street every day except Monday until July 19.
Published: Fri, 03 July, 2009
Comment on this article
You need to be logged in to comment. Login | Register